achieved a bloodstained victory.

[Sidenote: His Supremacy. Henry a Protestant. Anne Boleyn's Death, 1536.]

Henry alone could judge what was orthodoxy and what heresy; but to
disagree with _him_, was death. Traitor and heretic went to the
scaffold in the same hurdle; the Catholic who denied the King's
supremacy riding side by side with the Protestant who denied
transubstantiation. The Protestantism of this great convert was
political, not religious; he despised the doctrines of Lutheranism, and
it was dangerous to believe too much and equally dangerous to believe
too little. Heads dropped like leaves in the forest, and in three years
the Queen who had overturned England and almost Europe, was herself
carried to the scaffold (1536).

It was in truth a "Reign of Terror" by an absolutism standing upon the
ruin of every rival. The power of the Barons had gone; the Clergy were
panic-stricken, and Parliament was a servant, which arose and bowed
humbly to his vacant throne at mention of his name! A member for whom
he had sent knelt trembling one day before him. "Get my bill passed to-
morrow, my little man," said the King, "or to-morrow, this head of
yours will be off." The next day the bill passed, and millions of
Church property was confiscated, to be thrown away in gambling, or to
enrich the adherents of the King.

Thomas Cromwell, who had succeeded to Wolsey's vacant place, was his
efficient instrument. This student of Machiavelli's "Prince," without
passion or hate, pity or regret, marked men for destruction, as a
woodman does tall trees, the highest and proudest names in the Kingdom
being set down in his little notebook under the head of either "Heresy"